Thieves of Time 5-Day Reading PlanSample

# Excellence. Imagine a gifted painter pulling every stroke of the brush with meticulous detail and significance to create a jaw-dropping masterpiece. Or picture a Michelin star chef intricately and beautifully layering flavors and aromas to craft a dish that lights up your senses and makes your taste buds dance. What do they have in common? A fierce commitment to EXCELLENCE . There are people all over the world, in all sorts of vocations, who have this same commitment. Perhaps you’re one of them. It’s a deep-seated desire to do everything well, to be the kind of worker that breaks free from the status quo, to do the kind of work that stands out in the overcrowded market of mediocrity. If drive is the vehicle that moves our work, then excellence is carefully positioned behind the wheel. Excellence guides all that we do. It’s what makes us choose the right color scheme for that team presentation. It’s what beckons us to do a little more research for that company proposal. And, it’s what allows us to quietly but potently reflect who God is to the world around us. In a story about Jesus healing a blind and deaf man, the Gospel writer Mark records the crowd’s reaction. He said they were completely blown away by the miracle Jesus had just done. And, as they started talking, they said, “ He has done everything well” (Mark 7:37). To reflect God is to be like Jesus. And Jesus did everything with excellence! But, just like drive, excellence can be distorted. A blind pursuit of excellence can quickly lead us down the dark path of PERFECTIONISM . Here, we throw caution to the wind and determine that every little thing that enters our life should be done with absolute perfection. This trips us up. We get bogged down in the torrent of details. We struggle to know what’s important and what to give our time and energy to. Ultimately, we work too hard on low-value tasks and nothing ends up being done with excellence. The solution: Realize that our capacity for excellence is limited. We need to be focused. We must organize our work to have the time and energy to do the important things with excellence. This will require that we pause and assess what’s important and what our capacity for excellence really is. White Space Moment Spend some time looking over your calendar and to-do list. Determine what’s important and mark it. Now, ask yourself if you have the capacity to do those things with excellence. If not, adjust. Pray that God would guide you in this and help you do your work with excellence!